THE Petroleum Transporters Association Zambia (PTAZ) has thanked Governmnet for facilitating the awarding of 20 percent of fuel imports in the country to local transporters by suppliers after five years of negotiations.

And PTAZ has purchased 100 tankers valued at about US$12 million with the help of BancABC following the inclusion of local players in the oil sector which has mainly been dominated by the foreign transporting companies.

PTAZ secretary general Benson Tembo told the Daily Nation yesterday that following the awarding of a contract to Delta Energy, which is a Zambian company to supply fuel, the company obliged to honour the 20 percent stake for local transporters stipulated in its contract.

Mr. Tembo said as a result of the Delta’s close collaboration with local transporters, Dalbit, which was allegedly adamant on awarding the stipulated contractual obligation, had also started giving transportation contracts to local transporters.

He said the association was indebted to Government for taking a keen interest in capacity building local businesses, adding that since the oil marketing companies started engaging local transporters, their trucks have never been packed.

“If there is a transporter whose trucks are idle, then that transporter is not just serious. Government’s intervention has yielded the desired fruits and we can now breathe with a sigh of relief because our companies were almost collapsing.

‘‘We cannot believe it that the battle spanning five years between us and the oil marketing companies has finally come to an end.

“While Delta Energy is giving contracts to import fuel from Dar-es-salaam in Tanzania into the country, Dalbit is also giving us contracts for fuel transportation from Beira in Mozambique into Zambia and this will help us to grow. The Ministry of Energy has done a commendable job to ensure that those meetings we had were not in vain. We are thankful to President Edgar Lungu for looking into our plight,’’ said Mr Tembo.

He said with the current situation, Zambian transporters will reclaim their position in the sector by replacing the foreigners who dominated the business. He said the development will build capacity among the local transporters as they will have no other excuse to give for lack of business.

And Mr. Tembo said PTAZ has purchased 100 tankers valued at about US$12 million with the help of BancABC following the inclusion of local players in the oil sector which has mainly been dominated by foreign transporters.

He said the move will not only make players capable of handling any volumes of fuel that should be transported into the country but will create job opportunities for drivers and other supporting staff.

He said the association was in hurry to see that all the job opportunities that lay in the sector were mopped up by Zambians as long as they had the capacity to do so as that was one of the ways through which private investments would help Government by creating job opportunities for the citizens.